Valor, Honor, Conquest, and Justice, oh my!

[Newsom]

4) Do heroics semi-undergeared with a group of friends or guildies (no item level requirement to enter the old fashioned way)

From what I've heard, they are easy enough to complete with green gear, and by the time you've done each one once you hopefully have enough item level to queue in the Dungeon Finder.

[halabar]

There are only three other ways to get gear from what I can see:

1) Get reps to honored so that I can buy JP gear.
2) Crafting
3) Do the only normal mode dungeon that can drop high enough level gear: Mogu'shan Palace.

So, what am I supposed to do? A mix of all 3? What if that still doesn't give me the ilevel I need?

TL;DR - Where do I get non-pvp gear that will enable me to tank heroics?

You need to consult the gear list, and target accordingly, but you will get some of the needed rep just be leveling, and then can grind the rest.

Remember that the valor rep gear (requires revered) is in many cases better than the LFR gear, so you will want those reps anyway. Also, depending on what professions you have, you'll also want some of those reps.

Yes, first tier of Panda is about reps. You many not want them all, but you'll likely want at least a few of them leveled.

[Nooska]

I have not gotten a single piece of JP, VP or PVP gear on the beta, and I was over the ilvl reqs for heroics just by finishing up the quests and making a cloak for myself - ie 1 piece of crafted gear got me to 440+ - its not as arduous as it may seem (which is athe basis for a lot of discussion about what the point is with the JP vendors, as we won't need them by the time we have access to them)

[Loliinacan]

I think on live I'm going to buy three pieces of pvp gear, and supplement with crafting. I do like doing quests, so finishing up shouldn't be too difficult. I was also able to get one piece of gear from the Klaxxi with JP.

I am going to buy pvp helm, cloak, and ring. They seem to be BiS until heroic raiding, and the helm stays that way until the other two raids open up. I'm less freaked out about getting heroic ready now than I was when I wrote my post.

And if that doesn't work for whatever reason I can just do what Newsom suggested and go directly to the dungeons. I might have to do that anyway to help guildies out.

[Skye1013]

My thoughts on JP:

Unless things have changed, it'll be useable to purchase BoA gear (for those that haven't already bought every piece of BoA in existance) and for someone that levels via PvP that wants to do PvE, they can purchase a few PvE upgrades with JP.

Also... is there some reason JP has to be useful for the first part of the xpac? Once 5.1 gets released, the current VP gear will likely become JP gear, and viola, suddenly it's useful again.

[Mannstein]

My thoughts on JP:

Unless things have changed, it'll be useable to purchase BoA gear (for those that haven't already bought every piece of BoA in existance) and for someone that levels via PvP that wants to do PvE, they can purchase a few PvE upgrades with JP.

Also... is there some reason JP has to be useful for the first part of the xpac? Once 5.1 gets released, the current VP gear will likely become JP gear, and viola, suddenly it's useful again.

I might have missed something (won't be the first time/ or the last) but i was under the impression that there aren't any VP gear at the 1st tier of MoP.

[halabar]

I might have missed something (won't be the first time/ or the last) but i was under the impression that there aren't any VP gear at the 1st tier of MoP.

There's ooodles of VP gear, a lot of it from the rep vendors.

[bldavis]

no VP ilvl upgrades til T15

[halabar]

no VP ilvl upgrades til T15

I do wonder if those will be worthwhile before you get heroic gear. You'll be able to upgrade an item twice, but it won't be better than the next level (so normal gear upgraded twice would still be lower than heroic). Given that, and the fact that they will probably be expensive (at least 750 valor) I wonder if it will make sense to just save them till you get heroic gear to upgrade.

[bldavis]

no VP ilvl upgrades til T15

I do wonder if those will be worthwhile before you get heroic gear. You'll be able to upgrade an item twice, but it won't be better than the next level (so normal gear upgraded twice would still be lower than heroic). Given that, and the fact that they will probably be expensive (at least 750 valor) I wonder if it will make sense to just save them till you get heroic gear to upgrade.

or w/e your endgame is depending on
if you dont have a guild to raid with, and there are no pugs on your realm, LFR gear works then

if you do have a guild, but they arent very progessed, normal mode works

not everyone hits heroic raiding

[daishan]

I do wonder if those will be worthwhile before you get heroic gear. You'll be able to upgrade an item twice, but it won't be better than the next level (so normal gear upgraded twice would still be lower than heroic). Given that, and the fact that they will probably be expensive (at least 750 valor) I wonder if it will make sense to just save them till you get heroic gear to upgrade.

We have a 3k VP cap now so unless you start killing heroic bosses very early and get the drops you want, it'll probably come down to wasting VP over the cap or using it to upgrade normal mode drops.

[halabar]

I do wonder if those will be worthwhile before you get heroic gear. You'll be able to upgrade an item twice, but it won't be better than the next level (so normal gear upgraded twice would still be lower than heroic). Given that, and the fact that they will probably be expensive (at least 750 valor) I wonder if it will make sense to just save them till you get heroic gear to upgrade.

We have a 3k VP cap now so unless you start killing heroic bosses very early and get the drops you want, it'll probably come down to wasting VP over the cap or using it to upgrade normal mode drops.

Well, what we don't know is if you can buy these upgrade things and save them up. If so, you can just keep buying them, and then upgrade gear once you get whatever your top tier is.

[halabar]

no VP ilvl upgrades til T15

I do wonder if those will be worthwhile before you get heroic gear. You'll be able to upgrade an item twice, but it won't be better than the next level (so normal gear upgraded twice would still be lower than heroic). Given that, and the fact that they will probably be expensive (at least 750 valor) I wonder if it will make sense to just save them till you get heroic gear to upgrade.

or w/e your endgame is depending on
if you dont have a guild to raid with, and there are no pugs on your realm, LFR gear works then

if you do have a guild, but they arent very progessed, normal mode works

not everyone hits heroic raiding

If DS is any indication, just about any guild will at least clear normal eventually.

[Mannstein]

I might have missed something (won't be the first time/ or the last) but i was under the impression that there aren't any VP gear at the 1st tier of MoP.

There's ooodles of VP gear, a lot of it from the rep vendors.

My bad i thought it was all JP.

[bldavis]

If DS is any indication, just about any guild will at least clear normal eventually.

but what about those guilds that do not raid?

not everyone is like most of us and is in a raiding guild